Parachutes and Kisses (44 page)

He was triumphant. The sheets were mad with blood. His face, his cock, his belly ringed with it. He wore a mustache of blood, a beard of blood, war stripes of blood on his cheekbones; and she wore blood all over her belly.

She tried to eat him, to lick off her own blood, but he pushed her back, threw both her legs over one of his shoulders, and began to fuck her again with outrageous determination and spirit. She had never known anyone—except herself, perhaps—to give himself so wholly. Usually in sex, there is a part of the other that tries to hold back, seeking detachment, cynicism, judgment—anything rather than a complete fusion with the lover. But Bean had no such need of detachment; he was wholly unafraid of sex, wholly confident of his own manhood in a way that Isadora supposed must have vanished with the Vikings. His face bore the most intent expression: he would have killed himself by skidding into a tree if he couldn't fuck her, and now he fucked her as if fucking her were a matter of life and death.

Holding her legs aloft, pinning her ankles behind his ear, he fucked her wildly. She could not choose the position, nor control it. She could not lead with this dancing partner—but curiously enough this excited her more than ever and she came repeatedly in positions which she had previously thought were not propitious for her.

He chortled and laughed whenever she came. He could feel her orgasm squeezing his cock—so perfect was their fit.

“You're my fit, my mate,” he said, eyes wild with delight. “Have another one on me.”

He kneeled above her, brandishing his cock like a lethal weapon. It was very red, covered with her blood, and it had a tantalizing curve to it, almost a bend at midpoint.

“I want to fuck the daylights out of you,” Bean said, plunging in again. “I want to obliterate all the other lovers, all the other husbands,” he said, “I want to be your
man,”
he said on the next plunge, “your
man,
your
man,
your
man.”

Isadora gasped as he plunged into her. She gasped with pleasure and astonishment. Bean's eyes were wild.

“You madman,” she said. “You maniac.”

“I haven't even
begun
to fuck you,” he said, pulling out, rolling her over, and starting to smack her bottom again.

“What a beautiful ass you have—but not red enough. I'm going to make it red.”

He smacked her until the whole room resounded with smacks, until her buttocks smarted and tingled and the fiery feeling seemed to pass to her cunt. Then he rolled her over again and whipped her pussy with his hard cock. Again he thrust his cock into her and then pulled it out. Again he whipped her clit. He kept this up until she was begging for him to plunge in again.

“Not yet, baby, not yet,” he said.

He lowered himself between her legs and started to eat her again, revolving his tongue on her clit, filling both cunt and ass with fingers.

“I'm going to stick one finger deep inside until I can feel all the dark of you,” he said; then he went back to eating her.

She was wild with desire, fatigue, desire. She wanted to fight it, not to favor him with another orgasm. She had lost count of how many she'd had—but she was somehow sure that it was the next one which would bond her to him forever, which would finish her, finish her freedom. She was determined to hold back. She tried to think of Josh, of Kevin; she even tried to conjure up a headache —but it was in vain. She felt herself going over the shuddering edge into another orgasm, an orgasm which seemed to raise the
kundalini,
and which made her legs go into convulsions and her hands grip the back of his neck until he cried out in pain.

Then he mounted her again and fucked her with an intensity even greater than before. He turned his head to one side and his face became contorted as if in pain. He raised himself on his arms again and slid, glided, flew in and out of her body as if he were blasting off into space.

“Fly, darling, fly!” she said.

“Baby, baby, baby, baby,” he screamed, as he thrust into her, coming like mad, his pelvis and thighs convulsing as he came and one artery pulsed hotly in his thigh. He collapsed on top of her.

“My darling,” he said, rubbing her head and neck again. “My darling, darling, darling, darling, darling.”

They lay for a while in each other's arms, astounded by the intensity of their own coupling, astounded by the third creature they had made with their two bodies.

“I knew you were trouble,” Isadora said, “but I didn't know you were so
much
trouble.” She felt like Venus with Adonis in her arms, like Ishtar with her young consort, like Cleopatra with Mark Antony. This was the primal erotic experience, she knew—a woman in all her ripeness, and a young man who had not yet begun to lose the juice of life. Men forfeited so much for their worldly power that their life-force, sex-force, began to leave them sooner than it left women. Women were powered by their years, by their babies, by their passage on the planet; men grew oddly depleted. So a woman of thirty-nine and a man of twenty-five met at an equal point sexually. This was the great truth the French novelists knew—but we Americans resisted. Colette had known this when she bedded Maurice, who was thirty-five to her fifty-one. She had known it when she married him at sixty-one, calling him her best friend. It was the secret of wise women that they knew they held the life-fuse longer than men.

Just as Isadora was having these thoughts, the telephone rang.

“It's my business manager—in heaven,” she quipped, giggling.

“Hello?”

It was Kevin.

“Oh hi,” she said, feeling embarrassed, as if he could see her with the dried blood all over her belly, “how
are
you?”

Bean giggled.

“Shhhh,” she cautioned, putting her hand over the phone.

Bean picked up the discarded bloody Tampax from the floor and began to suck on it again.

“Mmmmmm,” he said.

“Shhh,” Isadora went again, hand cupped over the phone.

“Listen, Kevin?” she said. “I was just drifting off to sleep—can I call you in the morning? Okay?”

“Is something the matter?” Kevin was asking. “Are you sure you're all right?”

“Perfectly fine,” Isadora said.

“You sound very weak, very faint,” said Kevin.

“Just falling asleep, that's all ...” She feigned a sleepy, rather than fucked-out, voice.

“Sure you're all right?”

“Absolutely,” she purred, looking at Bean, who was still cutting up with the Tampax. Was he mad—or only merry? It was a definite possibility that he was crazy. Who but a crazy man could abandon himself so totally to the dark gods? But then, that made her crazy, too. Kevin, on the other hand, was not crazy: Kevin—the master of nice, little after-dinner
shtups.
Kevin would never take away her soul, but neither would he bring out the bacchante in her, the madness in her, the sheer animal insanity.

“Call you in the morning,” she said to Kevin, looking at Bean. “Hugs and kisses.” She hung up.

“Who was that?” Bean asked.

“My main man,” said Isadora.

“Your
what?”

“My main man. Want to make something of it?”

“I wish
I
were your main man,” Bean said.

“You're too young for me,” said Isadora, knowing in her soul it was not true.

“I have a feeling you'll age me fast,” said Bean. “Which reminds me—I have something for you.”

He was hard again and raring to go.

“Here,” he said, taking her by the hand and helping her out of the waterbed, “lean over the bed.”

He heaped the pillows in front of her for her to lean on, and cupping her breasts, he took her from behind, ramming her harder than before. Her cunt throbbed, ached, tingled. She screamed for him to ram her even harder, to smack her, to pound her. When Bean entered her, it was as if she were possessed by a dybbuk. When he rammed her, she found herself urging him on in a voice that didn't even seem to belong to her—as if she had truly become a bacchante, as if the boundaries between pain and pleasure had totally dissolved and he were her master, her priapic god, pounding her soul as well as her body.

Ah—she claimed to worship the Great Mother, but she was in thrall to the penis, cock-bound, cock-mastered, cock-unsure. Always she had known that men had this potential power over her, but never had she so surely met her sexual mate—a man who never tired of fucking, who liked to fuck until the point of soreness and exhaustion, a man who had as few hang-ups about sweat and smell and blood as she had, an earthy man, who knew that only through earth can we become divine.

“I want to be your
man,”
he growled, fucking her wildly from behind, filling her ass with his middle finger, her cunt with his hard, hooked cock, her soul with his passionate need, his intensity, his certainty, his desire.

She had never come before in this position—but when she did, it was as if thirty-nine years of comes were released and she howled and growled like an animal—whereupon he was aroused beyond containment and he began to come with a pelvis and cock gone wild, pounding her fiercely, filling her with come, until they both collapsed over the bed, panting with exhaustion.

“Come, let me hold you,” he said, climbing up on the bed and leading her to do the same. He put his arm around her and she nestled in the hollow of his body while he rubbed her head. Even lying together, they had the perfect fit. Though she was five foot three to his six foot two they lay in each other's arms as if they both belonged, had always belonged there. It was amazing how rarely that happened in life—a good fit between bodies. The only positive thing to be said for promiscuity was that it taught you that —with a vengeance.

“You're my fit, my mate,” he said. “Now that I've found you, I'm never going to let you go.”

“My darling,” Isadora said, fighting back the feeling that there might be any truth whatever in his words.

After tonight, I'm never going to see him again, she thought. He's a mirage, a dream, a demon out of an I. B. Singer story, the devil himself impersonating an angel. Passion like this cannot be clung to, cannot last, cannot keep. A man as charming as this could romance his way right into your heart, then leave you flat. She was not ready for that after the recent heartbreak with Josh. She might never be ready for it again.

“What are you thinking?” he asked. “What?”

“Nothing,” she said.

“You're a woman who's never thought nothing in her whole, entire life,” Bean said. “Of
that
I am certain.”

“I'm only thinking that you're trouble,” she said, “big trouble.”

“Just a very wild young man,” he said. “Your standard, garden-variety rake.”

“The garden of earthly delights,” she said. “Besides—a reformed rake makes the best husband—or so they used to believe in the eighteenth century
vide
Tom Jones.”

“Gadzooks, wench, are you proposing?”

“Hardly likely,” she said. “I've been married more than enough already.”

“I'd marry you in a minute,” he said, “and I don't even
believe
in marriage.” He stroked her head with a very gentle hand. He was as tender with her now as he had been rough before. Which was real—the tenderness or the roughness? Or were they
both
real? Unstoppered sex brings out all the extremes within us—angel and animal, angel and ape. She felt that unmistakable sign of a cosmic connection, a diminutive sun glowing inside her pelvis, a radiant spot of warmth two inches below her navel, at precisely that point upon which Zen masters meditate, the Chakra between navel and pubis.

“What am I going to do with you, Bean?” Isadora asked. “Am I going to have to adopt you?”

“Shhh—darling,” he said, “let's drift ...” and they fell asleep sweetly in each other's arms, sleeping entwined without the slightest strain, wrapped in each other's sweat and come and blood, utterly blissed, utterly peaceful.

Isadora slept as she had not since Josh's departure. She slept without Valium, without booze, without dope. She dreamt herself back in the old West Side apartment where she grew up, climbing the stairs to Papa's studio, looking over the balcony into the double-height living room, trying to balance there (although the railing was mysteriously missing), and not to fall into the abyss where her parents were entertaining their friends. They were toasting with French champagne in trumpet-shaped, hollow-stemmed glasses. The bubbles rose in the stems to the strains of tinkling cocktail-piano music. They were merry and gay and tittering about things kids could not understand. But now, out of the blue, they were talking about her, not knowing she was there. “She will have to learn it the hard way,” they were saying, “the hard way.”

Suddenly, those vague parental words struck terror into her heart. She wanted to say, “I'm here, I'm listening,” but she was eavesdropping and it was long past her bedtime, so she couldn't disclose her presence. She lost her toehold on the balcony and began to fall. She floated through the air, borne on air currents, like a winged seed pod, lazily circling down. She knew that eventually she would crash into the floor of that parental living room —and her terrible secret, her terrible guilt, would be exposed. Just before she hit bottom, she woke up with a start.

She awakened in a panic to feel the blood gushing between her legs and a strange face on the pillow beside her. The beginnings of a ruddy sunrise gleamed at the edges of the roman blinds which shrouded her bedroom windows. The digital clock said 5:59. Her daughter sometimes rose at six.